The American Jewish Archives Journal, Volume LXI 2009, Number 1

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592 Elisha Qimron and John Strugnell, Discoveries in the Judaean Desert 10: Qumran Cave 4, V-Miqsat Maase Ha-Torah (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994). 593 Abegg and Wacholder’s edition was announced in March 1995, although they had completed their work by June 1994. See the advertisement for the volume in BAR 21, no.2 (March/Apr. 1995): 95; and Ben Zion Wacholder and Martin Abegg, A Preliminary Edition of the Unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls: Hebrew and Aramaic Texts From Cave 4: Fascicle Three (Washington, DC: Biblical Archaeology Society, 1995), xxvi. 114 • American Jewish Archives Journal
How the Dead Sea Scrolls Influenced Reform Judaism Richard A. Freund The Dead Sea Scrolls are acknowledged as the greatest discovery of Hebrew manuscripts in modern times. For modern Jews and Judaism the question is, what impact do the scrolls have, beyond the obvious contributions to the understanding of ancient manuscript readings of the Hebrew Bible and verification of certain historical beliefs Jews held in the first centuries before and after the Common Era? Do the Dead Sea Scrolls actually affect modern Jewish synagogue theology and customs? Are they used to establish (or re-establish) ancient customs and beliefs in modern Jewish life? Do they translate into changes in modern Jewish life in any substantive way? This article will investigate how the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls played a role in the pulpits of American Jewish life—especially in Reform Judaism—from the 1950s onward. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 had little immediate influence on Reform Jews and their religious practice. However, the influence of their study, translation, and popular dissemination over subsequent decades is identifiable in the development of Reform liturgy and, more generally, in the understanding of the place and authenticity of Reform Judaism in Jewish history and tradition. Since they contain the oldest texts of the Hebrew Bible, there can be little doubt that the Jewish world would have seen the scrolls as significant in their own terms. Their place in Judaism was made even more significant, however, by the earlier discovery of the Cairo Geniza, in the first part of the twentieth century. The appropriation of the Geniza’s contents by Conservative and Reform scholars established the framework in which these movements explored the value of the scrolls’ later discovery for the spiritual lives of their coreligionists. The Reception of the Cairo Geniza Anticipates the Reception of the Dead Sea Scrolls Few manuscripts uncovered in the modern period have had an effect upon modern Jewish practice and doctrine like the Cairo Geniza. The Cairo Geniza in the Ben Ezra Synagogue of Old Fostat, Cairo, is unique because Egypt was the crossroads of Babylonian, North African, and European Judaism of the Islamic period (eighth century onward) and a center of medieval Jewish life. Cairo’s hot, dry conditions facilitated the preservation of many of these texts, and visitors had sought out and commented on the Geniza since the eighteenth century. In the beginning of the twentieth century, when the Geniza was not well known, the Hebrew Union College (HUC) and the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) developed two different attitudes toward these unknown How the Dead Sea Scrolls Influenced Reform Judaism • 115
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The American Jewish Archives Journa
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VoLume LXI NumbeR 1 (2009) A Journa
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To Our Readers Articles CONTENTS Ga
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Marc Lee Raphael, ed., The Columbia
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TO OUR READERS… The distinguished
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Scrolls. Saperstein has been a pion
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ARTICLES Optimistic, Even with the
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In the months before his death in N
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that if the Hebrew University purch
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In all of [the] effort to acquire a
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On 30 December The New York Times r
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As is clear from the roster of visi
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document for the second volume of s
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He is reputed to be neither an arch
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“A Commentary on the Book of Haba
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print, or else admit they do not kn
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In 1953 Orlinsky was still suggesti
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Yigael Yadin. Yadin was calling fro
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a session devoted to surveying the
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Christian origins? Do they throw an
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Scrolls, necessarily indicated an i
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Although I agree with his cautions
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when you write that ‘Zeitlin’s
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appeared explicitly. Therefore, sug
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acquisition of a set of negatives o
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There can be little doubt that in t
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Mazar be included on the team, alon
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areas as archaeology, linguistics,
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to publish two articles on the scro
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Left to right: G. Ernest Wright, Ne
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through the heavily padlocked and s
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other than study without an explici
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compiled but, because of financial
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United Nations and the Israeli mili
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egan teaching seminars on it 390 an
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Shanks’s intuition about the gene
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faculty and students. However, Zafr
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Page 95 and 96: Archaeology Society, 2007), 7-19. O
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Page 107 and 108: 205Wayne G. Rollins, “Reviewed wo
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Page 115 and 116: 340Broshi to Zafren, 12 June 1972;
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164 • American Jewish Archives Jo
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As Cooper demonstrates, it is strik
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and marry his wife’s younger sist
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etrayed by a belligerent … Americ
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Michael A. Meyer, ed., Joachim Prin
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interviewees are forty-somethings w
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This makes it lively reading even f
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of Schwartzbart’s own relatives).
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American Jews engage with Israelis
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Shlomit Steinberg, Orphaned Art: Lo
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Hollace Ava Weiner, Jewish “Junio
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street; Riv-Ellen Prell warns that
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Rabbi Geri Newburge Temple Emanuel,
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Biblical Archaeology Review, 24, 56
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Glueck, Nelson, viii, 1-7, 12, 17,
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L Lacheman, Ernest R., 8-9 Landau-C
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Samuel, (Mar) Athanasius Yeshue, me
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Wicklein, John, 94n194, 97n235 Weis
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